Two major cultural events on the horizon deserve your attention.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the final stop on the world-wide tour of Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective. The exhibit was put together by the Met, London's Tate Britain and Madrid's Prado. It runs until August 16th.

Study after Velazquez, 1950

Over at the New York Philharmonic, Lorin Mazel is hanging up the boxing gloves after a celebrated seven year tenure as music director of the institution. To mark his retirement, he's conducting four performances of Mahler's Eighth, nightly from June 24th to the 27th.